Page 101 of Earned Husband

“At White Water Lily or in Cairo?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Both. You’re supposed to be in Luxor, or did Dad send you home to come check on me?”

A pinched sort of smile appeared on his lips. “It wasn’t Dad.”

“Ashanti?” I guessed.

He snapped his fingers and stepped into the room, shutting the door gently behind him. “The one and only.”

I laughed. “Well, you can tell her that you’ve done your brotherly duty and checked in. I’m fine. Thank you. You can go now.”

Instead of turning and heading back to the door, he got comfortable in the chair opposite my desk. Something very few people knew about Khaled was that as much as he could be a pigheaded, ruthless asshole, he was also surprisingly easy to talk to sometimes. He really cared about his family, and when one of us was in trouble, he would move heaven and earth to help.

When I stared into his eyes and realized that he probably hadn’t only come here because of his wife, the dam of emotions inside me suddenly burst wide open. “I don’t understand him, Khaled. I just… don’t.”

I didn’t generally offload my baggage on him, but he didn’t even flinch, simply nodding and leaning back in his chair. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I wish I knew,” I spat, my volume control apparently broken as I threw my arms out to my sides. “I’m not sure if it’s just because I’ve spent my entire life around men who wear their hearts on their sleeves, but Colin isn’t like that.”

“He’s not,” Khaled agreed easily. “He’s also not dominated by his pride or his ego.”

“Exactly,” I snapped. “He’s a closed book. I know we’ve only known each other for a few months and maybe that’s all this is, but I don’t understand why he left things the way he did when he went home.”

“How did he leave things?” Khaled asked, his voice too soft and his tone too gentle, like he’d somehow already figured out how much I was hurting. “Did you two have a fight?”

“No, not really, but that’s the thing,” I admitted as my throat started burning with how hard I was trying to hold back tears. “At least if we had fought, I’d have known what was going on, but I just don’t. All he told me was that I don’t deserve to get dragged into what’s going on with his family.”

Before Khaled could respond, a soft knock came from my door and my secretary peeked inside. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have your afternoon mail, Ms. Saad.”

She pushed the door open and placed a neat stack of envelopes on my desk. Then she left and I glanced at the pile. My breath caught when I saw the oversized cream envelope she’d put right on top. It was postmarked from Chicago, my name written across it in Colin’s meticulous handwriting.

Excitement and relief sparked through my entire body. My hands immediately started reaching for it, but then another thought crashed in.What if this is it? What if he went home, spent a few days buried in lawyers, and then decided he can’t do this?

Khaled frowned. “Why do you look like you’re about to faint?”

“Because I might.” I motioned toward the envelope and his eyes widened.

“Is that from him?” he asked. “What are you waiting for? Open it.”

“What if he’s breaking up with me?” I asked after a brief pause. “What if?—”

He cut me off with a gentle shake of his head. “Give him the benefit of the doubt, Deja. The man is crazy about you. Anyone with eyes would see that.”

I held his gaze for another beat, then took a slow breath and slid my finger under the seal, hoping like hell that my brother was right about this. Inside the envelope was only a thick letter,nothing else, and I pulled it out, praying that these pages didn’t contain the news I thought they might.

Deja,

I’m writing this instead of calling because we never really discussed how we would communicate if we were ever separated again, and honestly, I’ve missed our letters.

By the time you read this, I’ll have been back in Chicago for at least a few days and you’re probably wondering if I’ve vanished into thin air. I haven’t. I promise. I’m still here, and if I have to be entirely honest, I’m kicking myself over the way I left.

I owe you a massive apology.

I took off that morning without explaining myself very well, and at the time, I told myself I was protecting you, but instead, I think I probably confused you. I might even have hurt you, which I never wanted to do.

The long and short of it is that I found out in Luxor that our legal situation in Chicago was rapidly changing. Jane told me that the lawyers had requested an urgent meeting and that things didn’t look good.

Over the next few pages, he explained everything about what had been going on with his family’s legal battles since before he’d even met me. He explained where they were at now and what had been happening while he’d been in Egypt. He even explained how he blamed himself for having been so happy here while things had been going so badly back home. Eventually, however, the legal dramas and the explanations about why his family name was still in trouble ended, and the tone of his letter changed again.